When thousands have been killed and millions have fled their homes, moaning about the absence of a band member who left 37 years ago is churlish at best.” How Pink Floyd surprised the rock world with Ukraine charity single Hey Hey Rise Up

In April 2022, Pink Floyd announced they were releasing their first new music since 1994’s The Division Bell. The single, Hey Hey, Rise Up, saw David Gilmour and Nick Mason reuniting to raise money for Ukraine Humanitarian Relief. But was the regrouping – which also included bassist Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney with a special guest appearance from BoomBox’s Andriy Khlyvnyuk – the shape of things to come? Or a one-off? Prog looks at one of the year’s biggest surprises.

In the very first Prog magazine, published in 2009, this writer was asked to “gaze into his crystal ball to see what the future holds for Floyd fans the world over”. The article, titled The Final Cut?, concluded with the summation that Pink Floyd’s “ownership of rock’s mystical high ground is forever assured… Their music still throws shapes and curves, hidden alleyways for an inquisitive mind to wander… With Pink Floyd, as with The Beatles, there will always be a considerable amount of interest in and scrutiny of what David Gilmour, Roger Waters and Nick Mason do… Whatever happens, Pink Floyd’s legend grows ever more mythical.”

In the intervening years, more mythical they became. Aside from the sundry reissues, exhibitions and solo albums, few would have foreseen a ‘new’ Pink Floyd album in 2014. The Endless River was a mixture of offcuts from The Division Bell and new material as a tribute to Richard Wright, very much a final word from the group. The praise for Mason’s drumming on that album, so often hidden in plain sight, brought about the unforeseen plot twist: he was to lead his own Pink Floyd, Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets, with Gary Kemp from Spandau Ballet and longtime Floyd bassist Guy Pratt, plus Lee Harris and Dom Beken. This seemed to underline that, as a collective, Pink Floyd had screamed their last scream.

So, imagine the astonishment when an announcement was made on April 7, 2022 that Pink Floyd would be releasing a brand-new track. Social media went into meltdown. What was it? Who was on it? By the way, which one’s Pink?

Hey Hey, Rise Up – the first completely new piece of recorded music from Floyd since 1994’s The Division Bell – was inspired by the Russian invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s forces, which began on February 24, 2022. The idea came about when Gilmour saw Instagram footage of soldier Andriy Khlyvnyuk singing the first verse of the 1914 Ukrainian patriotic anthem Oh, The Red Viburnum In The Meadow, a capella, while standing in Sofiyskaya Square in Kyiv.

Yet Khlyvnyuk was not any rank-and-file soldier. Famous in his home country, the week before he had left his band, BoomBox, on an American tour and returned home to fight, joining the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Force. Gilmour had a connection with Khlyvnyuk, having performed live with BoomBox at Camden’s Koko in 2015 at Staging A Revolution: I’m With The Banned, part of the Belarus Free Theatre’s 10th anniversary celebration. Ironically, Khlyvnyuk had visa problems and couldn’t attend, so the rest of the group backed Gilmour and Jon Carin in a ramshackle but spirited set of In Any Tongue and the title track of Rattle That Lock alongside Astronomy Domine and Wish You Were Here.

In those desperate first few weeks of the Russian invasion, Khlyvnyuk’s spirit chimed with the times. Gilmour instinctively knew he wanted to raise money as quickly as possibly for the Ukraine Humanitarian Relief Fund.